What Is Prompt Engineering?

Prompt engineering is the process of working out how to give an AI the right instructions to get a useful response.

A prompt can be as simple as asking a question, but it can also include extra information about what you want the AI to do, the context it needs and how you’d like the answer presented. For example, asking an AI to “summarise this report” might give you a perfectly useful result, but explaining that you want the five most important findings for a senior leadership team gives it a much clearer idea of what you’re looking for.

Why Does Prompt Engineering Matter?

The way you ask an AI to do something can have a big effect on what comes back. Giving it more useful context, being clear about the task and explaining what a good answer should look like can all improve the result.

That doesn’t mean there is always one perfect combination of words that unlocks the perfect answer. Prompt engineering can involve trying an instruction, looking at what comes back and then changing or adding to it until the response is actually useful.

As AI becomes better at understanding everyday language, the way we prompt it may continue to change. But the basic idea is fairly simple: the more clearly you can explain what you need, the better chance the AI has of helping you get there.